I chose Darth Vader as my next project. As I have basically no experience painting black details, I once more turned to Sorastro’s Painting Tutorials for inspiration.

Step 1 – Black Undercoat

No more than giving the miniature a good coat with Citadel’s black primer.

Step 2 – Highlighting Black

Highlighting Darth Vader is where the fun starts. I used a mix of Army Painter Matt Black and Citadel Fenrisian Grey, adding more and more Fenrisian Grey as I went to brighten the highlights (or some more black, when I found the contrast too stark).

Step 3 – Wash

Once I was happy with the highlights, I let the miniature dry, before giving it a wash with Citadel Nuln Oil.

Step 4 – Adding Details

Finally, once the wash had dried, I went back to some of the highlights, this time adding a bit of silver metallic paint into the aforementioned mix. I also used the metallic paint for the belt, the light-saber handle and the chain holding the cloak.

I painted the red (Mephiston Red) and blue (Lotheran Blue) buttons on the chest panel.

Last but not least, I gave the blade of the light saber a coat of Ceramite White in preparation of painting it in a vibrant red.

After the initial salt weathering on the AT-ST, I went to work on the details.

The weapons were painted with Army Painter black, followed by a think „wet-brush“ of chain mail metal and, after drying, a wash of Nuln Oil.

The entire miniature got a good wash of Nuln Oil. After the wash had dried, I added a few lines and highlights with GW’s Administratum Grey.

I also painted the cockpit windows with layers of Warpstone Glow, Moot Green and Gauss Blaster Green, along with a little bit of black and a white highlight dot.

Close-up of the AT-ST cockpit

Magnetising the Hatch & Commander

Another thing I wanted to add to the AT-ST was a magnet to the hatch, so I could swap it out for an old Games Workshop Tank Commander, who would serve as arch-villain General Weiss in my Imperial Assault campaign.

Magnetised bits for the Imperial Assault AT-ST

For this, I simply filed down the peg of the hatch-bit, so I could use a 2mm magnet and still have the hatch close.

I added a similar magnet to a Tank Commander and glued a counter-part magnet into the hole on top of the AT-ST, normally used to plug in the hatch.

„Surrender, Rebel Scum!“

There is obviously still some clean-up to do, not to mention the base. However, I am very happy how my AT-ST is turning out so far …

While I aim for a traditional grey look for the Imperial walker, I decided to try out a weathering technique I have never tried before: Salt Weathering.

The idea is the use salt (of the more coarse kind) as a random masking-material to create a weathering effect. I hope to achieve a rusted, worn-down look.

If it works, that is.

Step 1 – Brown Undercoat

I started by spraying the miniature with a coat of Citadel Mournfang Brown.

This should provide a brown, „rust-like“ colour to shine through the grey painting of the AT-ST thanks to the salt weathering.

Step 2 – Preparing the Salt

While the undercoat dried, I collected the materials for the salt weathering:

Rock/coarse-grain salt

A bowl (to catch salt sprinkled over the miniature)

Some water

A well-used, older brush

Step 3 – Applying Salt to the Miniature

Once the miniature was dry, I applied water to areas I wanted to weather. Afterwards, I sprinkled the wet parts with salt, which sticks to the moist areas.

I thought I was quite liberal in the application of salt, possibly overdoing it.

It certainly felt like a lot of salt at this stage. In retrospect, I probably could have added a bit more.

Step 4 – Grey Basecoat

After everything was dry, I sprayed the miniature with the actual basecoat I wanted to have for the final paint job. In this case, I used the basic matt grey from Humbrol, which seems like a good shade for Imperial vehicles.

Step 5 – Removing the Salt

Finally, the magic trick. Removing the salt with a soft brush to reveal parts of the brown under the grey basecoat.

Having never done this before, I was excited to see how this would turn out and was very pleased with the result. I expected to do worse on my first try.

That said, the weathering effect wasn’t nearly as excessive as I feared.

I am may have to be careful to keep the weathering clearly visible as I start to paint the miniature …

The main steps were all laid out in my first article. What was left to do where some small highlights, for example in the eyes, a bit of cleaning up and re-basing the miniatures on Citadel 25mm bases with a bit of scenery.

Voila! My Trandoshan Hunters ready to hunt down some Rebels.

Those are definitely a lot of fun to paint. I cannot recommend them enough!

Continuing with my project of painting up Fantasy Flight Games‘ Imperial Assault, I started working on the Trandoshan Hunters, whose most notorious representative is the Bounty Hunter Bossk from The Empire Strikes Back.

Trandoshan Hunters – Base Colours

Once again sticking closely to Sorastro’s Painting tutorials, I painted two variants of Trandoshan Hunters. Two Trandoshan Hunters in a snow/urban camouflage and two in a yellow-green jumpsuit similar to Bossk from The Empire Strikes Back.

For the yellow-green I used a roughly equal mix of Flash Gitz Yellow and Elysian Green. It’s a wonderfully „ugly“ colour in the best Star Wars tradition, and one I certainly would not have come up with on my own.

Shades & Highlights

After the base colours, I shaded the yellow-green jumpsuit, the mouth and the red parts with Agrax Earthshade and the white jumpsuit, the backpacks, weapons and grey trims with Nuln Oil.

I did not yet shade the skin, which was highlighted first with Elysian Green and second with a 50/50 mix of Elysian Green and Flash Gitz Yellow.

The yellow-green jumpsuit was highlighted with the abovementioned 50/50 mix, adding more yellow with each step. I also gave it a glaze of Lamenters Yellow.

And I keep finding mould-lines. Note to self: Clean the miniatures properly!

Shading Scaly Skin

For the skin itself (or scales), I took another advice from the fantastic tutorials by Sorastro’s painting, shading different Trandoshan Hunters with different green shades from Games Workshop to achieve a variety of skin tones.

I am making some progress with painting up my box of Imperial Assault. While some of the miniatures, like the Nexu, are wonderful, others are less thrilling.

One miniature I found a bit disappointing was the Stormtrooper E-Web Engineer. The soft plastic used by Fantasy Flight Games seems less suitable to long, sharp forms such as weapon barrels as it is for organic forms like the Nexu.

The E-Web Engineer’s barrel was particularly wobbly and not at all intimidating.

To get arround this, I dug into my Games Workshop bits-box and retrieved some Eldar guns. Though 40K weapons are mostly too large for Imperial Assault conversions, the slender Eldar-stuff just about works.

After painting the Nexu for Imperial Assault, I decided to rebase the miniature (or all my Imperial Assault miniatures), as I am not a fan of the supplied flat bases.Specifically, I used Games Workshop’s Citadel 50mm round bases, identical in size to the Nexu-bases from the Imperial Assault box, and made simple, unobstrusive grey bases with sand painted with a base coat of Skavenblight Dinge, a dry brush of Administratum Grey and some green Games Workshop flock.

The most difficult part by far was to get the Nexu off their old bases.

Fantasy Flight Games‘ plastic can be surprisingly tough to cut through and file off the miniature. The process even murdered my old Citadel clippers, after which I switched to proper tools to get the Imperial Assault Miniatures off the old bases.On to painting more Imperial Assault miniatures …

I managed to do a bit more painting for Imperial Assault, specifically the Nexu, which is such an awesome little model.

I certainly didn’t remember the Nexu from the movies (It is in the arena in Attack of the Clones, but I suppose I remember little from that movie at all). However, painting the miniature, I must say, it really is a wonderfully model and full of character.

Like many people painting Imperial Assault, I am mostly following the fantastic guides from Sorastro. Have a look there for an in-depth Nexu painting guide.

Step 1 – The Fur

For the fur, I used Rakarth Flesh for a base coat, followed by Screaming Skull for the top parts and a wash of Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil.

After the wash was dry, I applied a light dry brush with Screaming Skull.

Step 2 – Stripes

One of the coolest ideas from Sorastro’s video are the stripes painted on with washes.

Unfortunately, I found them a bit tricky to do. Some look really awesome, but some stripes came out a bit blotchy

Step 3 – Purple & Flesh

I also used a base of Daemonette Hide, along with Druchii Violet as a wash and Bugman’s Glow, sometimes mixed with Army Painter Matt White for highlights.

I ended up really liking the mix of purple and flesh-tones.

It wasn’t an intuitive colour-combination for me, but I think it could also be used for other exotic miniatures to good effect.

The Nexu so far …

Not quite finished yet, but with Mephiston Red eyes (again Druchii Violet to shade), black claws and a few other details, my Nexus are coming along nicely …